I like the hybrid system, imagine if it could be used as a sort of electronic NOS system? That would add a HUGE strategy element to the race. I could be interested in watching a few of this years races now.

The aero changes are for safety, the cars get faster every year and need to be slowed down.

The engine changes are to make the development more relevant to road car development... did you see the Ferrari sports car that uses a hybrid system entirely to make it more fun to drive instead of trying to save fuel?

Kind of hybrids. With the fuel restrictions, they need every bit of help they can get. This gives them a max of 33 sec of an extra 160 hp per lap. That can save a lot of fuel, and one extra lap on a tank can often win the race.

Cool *animation. Can anyone explain why they need such big battery packs and use regenerative breaking? Are they driving hybrids or something?

Well at a certain cascading point your science example goes flying right out the fucking window when you consider that anyone with fucking ocular prowess and at least a 90 I.Q. can see (at age 2) that Lawrence Fish-burn and Sam Jackson look no fucking alike whatsoever...Try that formula on any euro-mutt hybrids...

Cross-hybridization is one thing. Patenting a cow you found in Africa and then suing the life out of the original tribe is the Monsanto way. Or, changing one gene and then claiming ownership of all corn in the US and then suing small farmers when their crops get contaminated (and of course, denying it) is GMO. The fight against GMO isn't always a "health" concern about wanting to stay truer to our millions of years of evolution and cohabitation with certain foods. It's also about fighting against mega-corperations that unfairly target small farmers with regulations such as requiring white painted walls . . . yearly, or requiring an office and bathroom for a health inspector to use once a year that no one else can use ever, or so many laws and regulations that a small farmer can inadvertently break the law, steal someone's intellectual property and be sued out of existence all while doing the same thing their family has been doing for over 100 years.

When we plant crops of only one variety over large swathes of land we invite disaster. It's already happen numerous times. Hell, no one remember deadly spinach killing around 50 people with no way to trace the origin? Mad Cow? Or the destruction of economies in their world countries because Monsanto requires only their crop to be grown and subsistence farmers into the ghetto's of India so that more High Fructose Corn Syrup can be made.

Or worse . . . the US Farm Bill . . . *shivers*

So no, it's not always about health. It's about staying true to the roots of a society that worships our farmers as life-givers, essential to our health and economy and free of unknown risk that could catastrophically damage the world as we know it all while ending a giant untouchable monopoly that refuses to let even the tiniest bit of oversight oversee it's operations so it can continue to "own life."

Automatically replaced video embed code with backup #4038 (supplied by member Hybrid) - video declared dead by member VoodooV.

There is a flaw in your premise which suggests that somehow a capitalist system is susceptible to the "evils of man," but a "government" (no matter how limited) is not. Man is either evil or Man is not evil, regardless of the system in which Man functions. A system of government regulation can either be exploited or not, so a government imposed regulation thus becomes a mechanism for that manipulation.

Capitalism, by contrast, does not require the governmental oversight to impose the regulations that the market imposes upon itself. Such a system (despite the prevalent perception, of late) does not, in and of itself, generate the kinds of crony, kleptocratic monopolies that we have seen on the rise for the past 30+ years. That is, sadly, the effect of government -- the original monopoly -- whose regulations and hybridized (private/public) contractual agreements with the private sector create these imbalances and inequities throughout society. As far as I can tell, only the implicit competitions of the free market present the kinds of price restrictions that cannot be circumvented.

Note that capitalist competition does not mean a system of 'survival of the fittest' and it does not entail the strong surviving at the expense of the weak. In fact, the pattern seen throughout a competitive market is that of a "leader" challenged by a "second-place" (Coke then Pepsi), followed by a more distant third (other colas) and then a variety of many others (Sprite, 7-Up, A&W, etc.) Competition in capitalism differs considerably from that seen in the animal kingdom because humans, unlike animals, can increase the supply of what they need to survive, while animals cannot (with possible exceptions like bees making honey). In fact, capitalist competition does the opposite, it allows those who would otherwise not survive (because they cannot produce for themselves, or those too weak to compete) to survive by partaking in the market of increased supply. Even if those people are unable to hunt or farm for themselves, they can still feed themselves with the abundance of food produced by capitalist competition, which is a competition to produce more and better of whatever the market needs (with an accurate reflection of supply and demand in the price, which is very different from the kinds of "blind" economic calculations necessary in a centralized system of government). And to have such an abundance of production/supply, you need capital investment. There's no other alternative.

In any case, read the article I posted. Let me know what you think.

Stephen Merchant is like some kind of wading bird hybrid.

He went through the entire vid without mentioning Williams Hybrid Power, the spin-off from the flywheel storage developed for the Williams F1 car in 2008/2009:



Unfortunately it couldn't be scaled up to the increased KERS output required for the 2011 season, at least not in a way that fit in an F1 car, so Williams now run the same electric KERS as everybody else. The flywheels are used in other racing series and in road cars though, as mentioned in their vid.

One very obvious difference between the prototype bicycle system in this vid and the WHP version is that they are using relatively lightweight composite flywheels and then spinning them to speeds that would tear apart the car flywheel from this vid, typically 20,000 to 50,000 rpm. This greatly increases the amount of energy storage available which increases linearly with mass, but with the square of rotational velocity.

http://rpm2.8k.com/basics.htm

Soon enough, hybrids and electrics will be worth investing in-500 hp, all wheel drive, 0-60 in under 6 seconds, now THESE are beginning to appeal to the driver in me.....

M Malevolent
O Oligarchic
N Nazified
S Succubal
A Anti-Neutraceutical
N Nonvegetarian
T Treachetourial
O Organo-assassins

The following address should be on every death to eco-terroristists' organization's, "Raze This Motherfucker", hit list:

World Headquarters Monsanto Company 800 North Lindbergh Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63167. Phone: 314/694-1000

Everyone who works for this corporation should be considered complicit in the undoing of species-

Monsanto is the reason bees are disappearing worldwide-
Monsanto is the reason heath care is unaffordable-
Monsanto is the reason gasoline no longer lubricates rubber and composites in combustion engines-
Monsanto is responsible for the disappearance of heirloom variety seed banks the world over-(hybrids notwithstanding, their originating variants tucked-away in bunkers)
Monsanto is a poisonous cabal of eugenicists, working to help other cunts reduce the world population through systematic, experimental means, with the world's sentients as her guinea pigs.

Someone needs to mail them some anthrax powder mixed with ricin, to get that full effect.

Strictly speaking, I wouldn't want to have Australia's or Japan's system of gun control either.

As usual, I think a hybrid is possible. As usual, the argument gets framed as two extremes. total gun confiscation vs total unfettered access. Neither would work for America. As usual, the problem isn't really the laws, the problem is enforcement, but the NRA has done everything they can to make enforcement next to impossible too.

People like to throw out false analogies between cars and guns...so let them eat those words. We license cars and periodically re-test for competency. So do something similar for firearms. Perhaps some sort of home safety audit. prove you've got your firearms locked up safely. With rights come responsibility after all.

Sorry grampa, but if you can't see worth a damn, you're a liability, not a boon, with a weapon.

How many times have we seen on a sift someone who does treat weapons with respect and safety and another sift with some fucking idiot putting Evolution-into-Action with a firearm. If you can demonstrate proficiency and safety, most people wouldn't care how many weapons you have.

Even the NRA should be for this since they like to claim they care about safety. /sarcasm

Miss you Hybrid! Come back!!!!

Can anyone explain what the song is? I assumed it was going to be a Germanic version of the Queen song ("We Will Rock You") based on the initial stomp-stomp-clapping, but this sounds entirely different. Is it an older song? Some weird Bavarian folk / rock hybrid?